Four-Sided Triangle

conversing with the girl who might or might not be Joan, a nurse told him a man was waiting outside to see him. He went, and found a police officer standing there.

Ever since the catastrophe which had wrecked Bill’s laboratory, the police had been looking around that locality, searching for any possible clues. Buried in the ground they had found a safe, burst and broken. Inside were the charred remains of books, papers, and letters. They had examined them, without gleaning much, and now the officer wished to know if Will could gather anything from them.

Will took the bundle and went through it. There was a packet of purely personal letters, and some old tradesmen’s accounts, paid and receipted. These with the officer’s consent, were destroyed. But also there were the burnt remains of three of Bill’s experimental notebooks.

They were written in Bill’s system of shorthand, which Will understood. The first two were old, and of no particular interest: The last, however—unfortunately the most badly charred of the three—was an account of Bill’s attempts to infuse life into his replicas of living creatures.

The last pages were about the experiment of creating another Joan, and the last recognisable entry read:

This clumsy business of pumping through pipes, in the manner of a blood transfusion left a small scar at the base of Doll’s neck, the only flaw in an otherwise perfect copy of Joan. I resented…

The rest was burned away.

To the astonishment of the police inspector, Will turned without saying a word and hurried back into the ward.

“Let me examine your neck, dear, I want to see if you’ve been biting yourself,” he said, with a false lightness.

Wondering, the girl allowed herself to be examined. There was not the slightest sign of a scar anywhere on her neck.

“You are Joan,” he said, and embraced her as satisfactorily as her injuries would permit.

“I am Joan,” she repeated. kissing and hugging him back. And at last they knew again the blessedness of peace of mind.

For once, Fate, which had used them so hardly, showed mercy, and they never knew that in the packet of Bill’s receipted accounts, which Will had destroyed, was one from a plastic surgeon, which began:

“For removing operation scar from neck, and two days’ nursing and attention.”

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[found floating in cyberspace]

[rtf to html conversion with DL WordMagus and HTMLBookfixer. A few errors that appear to have been part of the orginal publication have been left alone.]

[Sept 16, 2005—v1 html]